New Charitable Store Opens in SoHo. It's Called treasure&bond.

New Charitable Store Opens in SoHo. It's Called treasure&bond. (PRNewsFoto/Nordstrom)

NEW YORK, Aug. 19, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Hi. This is our press release. It's to let you all know that today we opened our doors at treasure&bond, a new boutique located at 350 West Broadway (between Broome and Grand). It's something different in retail and philanthropy, and we hope people will come by to see what we're about. We plan to donate 100% of our profits to non-profit organizations benefitting children of New York City.

We're part store / part giving organization, and each quarter we plan on supporting two New York City-based programs through the products we sell. We've selected eight beneficiaries for the first year. For the August-October 2011 quarter, we're supporting: The New York Public Library Programs for Children and Young Adults and New York City's Young Men's Initiative. The beneficiaries for November 2011-January 2012 are: Children's Health Fund and Coalition for the Homeless: Camp Homeward Bound Sleep-Away Camp and After School Services; for February 2012-April 2012, we'll support: The Edible Schoolyard NYC and Friends of the High Line's Family and Education Programs; and for May 2012-July 2012 the beneficiaries are Pediatric Cancer Care, Memorial Sloan Kettering and Association to Benefit Children (ABC). All of these groups offer terrific programs that we think make a real difference in kids' lives. There's a bunch more information about these amazing programs and how we'll handle the selection of future beneficiaries on our website: http://www.treasureandbond.com.

The Good

We're a local business and we want to give back to the people we'll be serving. Here's how it will work. We have an eclectic selection of unique fashion, art, gifts and other merchandise that we hope you'll want to buy. Every quarter, we'll tally up sales and subtract all of our expenses and every bit of profit will be split equally among the non-profit partners we've selected to help the kids of New York.

The Goods

We're super excited about the imaginative merchandise mix we have to offer at our store. Every item we've picked has a story behind it. We hope you'll see the selection as a curated inventory from resources all over the globe that appeals to a variety of tastes, interests and budgets. We tried to create a rich, bazaar-like mix of some of the most compelling pieces in the market today, including many exclusive to treasure&bond in the United States. We'll have over 150 labels in nearly every category such as:

Jewelry from Akong London (not sold any where else in the U.S.)

Limited edition bags from A.toy

Bliss Lau's incredible hybrid apparel-jewelry-accessory pieces

Custom couture hats from Satya Twena

Authentic vintage glasses from The Vintage Frame Company (not sold any where else in the U.S.)

There will be a variety of gift items and pieces for the home and clothes for men, women and children from local designers, including our neighbor Rogan down the street, as well as international cult brands.

A Word About Our Owner

You may have heard that we're owned by Nordstrom. Aside from helping us get this location, providing some back office help, and generally enabling this thing to get off the ground, they've pretty much left us alone. We're not a mini-Nordstrom and we won't be able to accept Nordstrom's retail credit card. We intend to operate independently and build things up from the grassroots ourselves. Also, we're going to be looking for ways to keep our costs as low as possible so that we can maximize proceeds for the organizations we're supporting. That means we'll be creative, scrappy and run a lean-and-mean operation. Some of the things we're doing involve purposely incorporating many recycled, reclaimed or repurposed materials from our parent company. We know we've got a lot to learn and that we're going to need ideas and lots of help from the community and our different partners in order to turn this into a successful experiment. We look forward to the challenge.

A Word of Thanks

We'd like to thank Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour and New York Public Library Chairman Catie Marron for helping to hatch this idea. It started with a phone call from Anna to Pete Nordstrom that led to a conversation with Catie and if it weren't for that moment, we wouldn't be here today. Thank you.